The Swan and The Wolf
by Lobshave
Summary: Tattoos stop staying still when you meet your soulmate. You knew it. Everybody did. It still didn't stop you from being surprised when it happened.
1. Swan and Wolf

Disclaimer: Rwby belongs to rooster teeth, Monty Oum, ect ect. I don't earn any money from this.

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><p>You were born with a swan on the shoulder.<p>

When you were younger, you used to wonder who it would animate for. For a prince? A gentleman thief? That kind of things kept you up at night.

As you got older, though, those thoughts slowly slipped out of your mind. It's not that you didn't care; you just had better things to do. Unsurprisingly, learning all the proper ways to be the perfect heiress left very little room to worry about love.

This was why, when you suddenly felt a tickle on your shoulder as you were heading toward the grocery shop, your first emotion had been complete and utter surprise.

Your tattoo, however, didn't let you have time to think. You felt it moving against your skin, flying down your right arm, flapping its wings frantically toward a nearby street.

You knew what it meant. Everyone did.

You started running.

You don't know what you were expecting. You've been told that soulmates were rarely how you thought they'd be. Since you were either heading toward the garage or the kindergarten, you supposed that you could abandon the whole prince charming idea. But still, would he be nice? Smart? Strong? A cat person or dog person?

Your thoughts are violently interrupted by someone running into you.

_"Oh, sorry, I was-"_

The end of that sentence was never heard.

In front of you, is a girl, young, dressed in dirty overalls and holding a screwdriver loosely in her left hand.

On her right one, waving its tail happily, is a wolf tattoo staring right at your own swan.


	2. Cat and Dragon

You weren't born with a tattoo.

It comes with being a faunus; you can have ears, tails, scales, spikes, paws, whatever you want, but no tattoo. For a long time, it'd been used as proof that fauna didn't actually have a soul; and even now, it was commonly believed that they couldn't have a soulmate.

Truly, they were lesser beings.

That assumption always left a bad taste in your mouth. Whether or not you had a soulmate didn't matter to you; however, the fact that people thought you lacked feelings and intelligence because of something that stupid never failed to piss you off.

But what could you say? You can't help how you were born.

You hid the ears; it was hilarious, how a simple bow could change the way people treated you. Though, you never forgot -not that you could have, anyway- who you truly were inside.

That was why, when a strong hand clasped your shoulder, your first reaction had been aggressiveness.

Then surprise.

Then confusion.

_"Uhm, hello! Hehe, I guess we're soulmates, aren't we?"_

In front of you, looking extremely nervous despite her bright smile, was a tall blonde in a tank top.

Dancing on her arms was the most majestic dragon tattoo you've ever seen.


	3. Snake and Pigeon

Whoa! I didn't except actual reviews for this story! Thank you all for this, you have no idea how much this motivate me ^^

Oh, and for ya Kathi9000, this is gonna sounds really cheesy (but you can't really help it when you talk about soulmate stuff, can you?) but the thing is, even if fauna aren't born with tattoos, they still have soulmates, tho they obviously don't get warned the way humans do. But if their soulmate is a human, then the human's tattoo will react, even if they can't respond. Unless you wanted to know why the dragon in particular fitted Blake, in which case I can only say that it's magic soulmatey shenanigans. ..Sorry, I'm kind of bad when it come to explaining myself.

(Fun fact: I've thought that people with tattooless soulmates tended to have bigger tattoos than average -in this case, dragon- to compensate. Sadly, I wasn't able to incorporate it.)

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><p>There was an awful lot of people who assumed that you hadn't met your soulmate yet.<p>

To be fair, your snake didn't move often; it preferred to sleep most of the time, curled around your chest, its head resting on the side of your neck.

But even when it looked like a real unmoving tattoo, it was never totally still; you could feel the light pressure of its weight on your body, the tickle of its pseudo-chest raising on your skin.

And you don't remember a time when it wasn't this way.

You've read somewhere, that, on average, people found their soulmates between 20 and 30 years old. There were still a lot of occurrences past that and during teen years, of course, but way less. Very few people stayed soulmateless past 50 years old.

But, you found your other half on your first day at kindergarten in the form of a very tiny, very excited pink ball of energy with a pigeon flying up her sleeve.

"Your tattoo is moving." She'd said, matter-of-factly.

"Yours is too." You'd answered, not sure how to react.

You didn't know what it meant. None of you did. You were too young.

"It obviously means that we are the coolest people ever. Let's stick together and be friends!"

But to you, as you took her hand and started playing, this was a pefectly logical explanation.

(And it still is.)


	4. Mouse and Tiger

Your sisters all found their soulmates when they were 13.

There was no problem with that, of course. There were instances of people finding their half at any age, some from the moment they were born and others, the last few seconds before passing away.

But for you, 17 years old and still soulmateless, it was the worst kind of pressure.

They thought you didn't notice, but you did, you knew, you almost felt in your very core how they looked at you, what they thought about you. Oh, poor guy, they thought. I feel sorry for him, another was probably thinking.

And it hurt.

You slowly started to stay away from them. You found all the excuses possible and imaginable; you had to find a book at the library, you had to help at Ren's café today; slowly, but surely, you started driving yourself away from them.

And as you started feeling better, the idea of a soulmate slowly drove away as well, forgotten.

When it happened, it was the least expected moment for you. You were heading towards the stadium to watch a soccer match or whatever -the sport in itself didn't matter to you to be honest, but it gave you a good excuse for today- and something started to tickle your back.

Something small, that climbed on you and headed toward your left arm.

Something light, so very light, that it was a wonder if it had an actual volume.

Something you recognized on the back of your hand, the tiny moose tattoo you were born with.

You started running.

You were ready for everything, really. Your sisters gave you a good idea about what you should be ready for; same or opposite gender, younger or older, human or faunus, anything.

Yeah, you were ready.

You stumbled in the middle of the stadium. For a second, you were confused, then you made eye contact with the tiger tattoo climbing on its owner's cheek.

Owner being the most confused and famous redhead of the town and probably also the country.

…You were _so_ not ready.

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><p>Aaaaaand this is where I end this fic. Maybe one day I'll turn it into a full fic intead of few snippets, who knows.<p>

Hope ya'll enjoyed it!

(oh, and btw, if ya want to reuse the idea for your own fic, don't forget to pm me first; I wanna read whatever you you end up doing, and there's some stuff related to this au I couldn't share but were good ideas anyway you might want to know. That's it!)


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